Egyptian stocks hit five-month high

The stock market in Egypt hit a five-month high yesterday in daily turnover.

Egypt’s stocks [2]ended up in Wednesday trading to hit a whopping five-month high in daily turnover of LE1 billion on Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) transactions as Arab investors sold around 2.5 million shares to foreign institutions worth LE691.7 million.

“The high is probably an impact of the newly announced merging between OCI and it’s US-based fertilizer company to establish OCI NV,” said Ashraf Abdel-Aziz, head of institutional sales at Arabeya Online Securities.

On Friday, it was reported that a group of US investors, led by Bill Gates-owned Cascade Investment LLC, committed approximately $1 billion for a stake in OCI NV, with experts expecting the deal to boost investor confidence in Egypt's main benchmark EGX30.

The main EGX30 index rose by 0.16 per cent, recording 5,689.23 points in a session seeing foreign investors and Egyptians net-buyers with LE545 million and LE14.2 million respectively, despite protests outside the headquarters of the Egyptian bourse.